Manual Reference Pages - DEB-SHLIBS (5)

CONTENTS

shlibs files map shared library names and versions
(sonames) to dependencies suitable for a package control file. There is one
entry per line. Blank lines are not allowed. Lines beginning
with an # character are considered commentary, and are ignored.
All other lines must have the format

[type:]
libraryversiondependencies

The library and version fields are whitespace-delimited,
but the dependencies field extends to the end of the line. The
type field is optional and normally not needed.

The dependencies field has the same syntax as the Depends
field in a binary control file, see deb-control(5).
See also the Debian Policy Manual for further details.

The
shlibs file for a typical library package, named
libcrunch1, that provides one library whose soname is
libcrunch.so.1, might read

libcrunch 1 libcrunch1 (>= 1.2-1)

The dependencies
must mention the most recent version of the package that added new
symbols to the library: in the above example, new symbols were added to
version 1.2 of
libcrunch. This is not the only reason the dependencies might need to be
tightened; again, see the Debian Policy Manual for details.